Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Fox Haven Farm Garden Charms Workshop

Fox Haven Farm Garden Charms Workshop on May 12 was a lot of fun!
Thanks so much to the amazing Lacey Walker for the invite!
It was beautiful warm day and our group of plant lovers went on a forage. Down the driveway from the teaching garden we took a right turn and were immediately in a serious vine zone! We took a few minutes to look around and identify the plants that were in the area. Abundance was the surrounding us in all directions above and below.

Trees, vines, herbs, birds, water, ya know the whole smear!
So folks set out to connect and harvest the plants with which they most identified.
Grapevine-Honeysuckle-Wisteria-English Ivy, Virginia Creeper, Bittersweet were most popular. The land on the edge of the farm road was super generous and we were
able to relieve a tree from vines that were choking it. We all heard the tree's big sigh of relief. Yeah!
We gathered what we needed and headed back up the hill to work on the barn's patio.

Perfecto!

There was lots of space for folks to work on their charms and we reaffirmed our purpose and got started. I shared a story about the "Listen"tree sculpture that I worked on with artist Larry Jones in 2015. That piece is part of an Art on the Trails project that our county @PGParks has initiated that features artwork created from natural materials on our park trails. The original idea was to allow trail users to experience the artwork as it continues on it's natural cycle of decomposition. Listen was a vine project, with bittersweet as it's main material. I encouraged participants to allow the materials of their charms to do the same.

The resulting Charms were fun, most had the vine's leaves on them and looked almost cloaked, in green. The magic will be exposed as nature runs it's course. Bravo!

Great job everyone and thanks for sending pics of the charms in your nature space.

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To teach is to learn twice

Visual artist, Social Justice activist, educator and traveler,
UU.
For 25 years I have offered visual arts projects in communities with a focus on creative literacy, community collaboration and arts integrated curriculum. Our projects have been successful in schools with grades 3-12 and with multi generational, multicultural and interfaith communities in diverse settings.